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A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American supernatural slasher horror film written and directed by Wes Craven, and the first film of the ''Nightmare on Elm Street'' franchise. The film stars Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Jonathan L. Dee, and Johnny Depp in his feature film debut. Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Springwood, Ohio, the plot revolves around several teenagers who are stalked and killed in their dreams (and thus killed in reality) by Freddy Krueger. The teenagers are unaware of the cause of this strange phenomenon, but their parents hold a dark secret from long ago. Craven produced A Nightmare on Elm Street on an estimated budget of just $1.8 million,John Kenneth Muir, "Career Overview" in Wes Craven: The Art of Horror (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 1998), p. 18, ISBN 0-7864-1923-7. a sum the film earned back during its first week. An instant commercial success, the film went on to gross over $25 million at the United States box office. A Nightmare on Elm Street was met with rave critical reviews and went on to make a very significant impact on the horror genre, spawning a franchise consisting of a line of sequels, a [[Freddy vs. Jason|crossover with Friday the 13th]], beyond various other works of imitation; a remake of the same name was released in 2010. Jim Harper, Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies (Manchester, Eng.: Headpress, 2004), p. 126, ISBN 1-900486-39-3. The film is credited with carrying on many tropes found in low-budget horror films of the 1970s and 1980s, originating in John Carpenter's 1978 horror film Halloween, including the morality play that revolves around sexual promiscuity in teenagers resulting in their eventual death, leading to the term "slasher film".Rick Worland, The Horror Film: A Brief Introduction (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), p. 106, ISBN 1-4051-3902-1. Critics and film historians argue that the film's premise is the question of the distinction between dreams and reality, which is manifested in the film through the teenagers' dreams and their realities.Kelly Bulkeley, Visions of the Night: Dreams, Religion, and Psychology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 108; see also chap. 11: "Dreamily Deconstructing the Dream Factory: The Wizard of Oz and Nightmare on Elm Street," ISBN 0-7914-4283-7. Critics today praise the film's ability to transgress "the boundaries between the imaginary and real",Ian Conrich, "Seducing the Subject: Fred Krueger, Popular Culture and the Nightmare on Elm Street Films" in Trash Aesthetics: Popular Culture and its Audience, ed. Deborah Cartmell, I. Q. Hunter, Heldi Kaye and Imelda Whelehan (London: Pluto Press, 2004), p. 119, ISBN 0-7453-1202-0. toying with audience perceptions.James Berardinelli, review of A Nightmare on Elm Street, at ReelViews; last accessed August 30, 2006. Plot An unknown character in a boiler room fashions a glove with knives on four of the fingers then stalks high school student Tina Grey who appears there in her nightgown. He attacks her and she awakens from a horrific nightmare with slashes in her nightgown identical to the pattern the knived glove would have made. Unnerved by the encounter, Tina is unable to fall back to sleep. The next morning she confides in her friend Nancy Thompson and her boyfriend Glen Lantz about the nightmare. Nancy recalls a nursery rhyme about a boogieman named Freddy, but they shrug it off as a weird dream. That night, unable to sleep alone, Tina has Nancy and Glen come over to spend the night where the details of Tina's dream intrigues Nancy, as she had a similar dream. Upon describing him, Glen's attention is piqued as Tina realizes that Nancy's dream stalker was the same one she had seen. Tina's boyfriend Rod Lane crashes the sleepover to reconcile for an earlier argument, and he and Tina have sex in her mother's bedroom while Nancy and Glen sleep in separate rooms. After she falls asleep, Tina is again stalked by the killer who toys with her relentlessly before going in for the kill. As she struggles in her dream, her terror awakens Rod, who witnesses slashes appearing on Tina's body before she is dragged along the wall to the ceiling. Her screams awaken Nancy and Glen who can't enter the room. Tina falls to the bed dead and Rod escapes through the window to find out what happened, thus implicating him in the murder. Nancy is questioned by her father Lt. Don Thompson at the police station and she explains to her parents about the nightmares and that Tina had predicted she was going to die. The next morning, Rod professes his innocence to Nancy before he is caught and arrested by the police. At school, Nancy falls asleep during class and is led down to the school's boiler room by Tina's bodybag. She is approached by a man calling himself Freddy, but Glen's advice to tell herself she's only dreaming doesn't work and she burns her arm on a steam pipe, wakening violently in class. Seeing a burn mark on her arm from her dream, she becomes afraid of falling asleep. This fails when Nancy falls asleep in the bathtub and is nearly drowned by Freddy. After Rod tells her about his nightmares, which coincide with hers and Tina's, she has Glen stand watch over her while she sleeps. She sees Freddy in Rod's jail cell in her dream before she is attacked by him. Glen having fallen asleep she is unable to be woken up by him until her alarm clock goes off. The two of them rush to the jail to check on Rod and find that he's been hanged in an apparent suicide. At Rod's funeral, Nancy's mother Marge insists on finding psychiatric help for Nancy who now refuses to go to sleep. At a dream clinic, she has a particularly violent dream and when she is awakened, she has a streak of white in her hair and a bloody slash on her arm. To Marge's horror, Nancy discovers she pulled an old hat out of her dream, which Marge seems to recognize. Marge begins to drink heavily and puts security bars on the house, when Nancy questions Marge who she's protecting her from, Marge tells Nancy about a child killer named Freddy Krueger who escaped charges on a technicality. In retaliation, the parents of the neighborhood burned him alive in the plant he used to work in, she shows Nancy his gloved weapon and she realizes that somehow Freddy is now taking vengeance on the parents of the neighborhood by killing their children in their dreams. She works with Glen to come up with a plan for Nancy to take Freddy out of her dream like she did with his hat and for him to knock him out when she does. But their respective parents keep them apart; (for her safety and keeping Glen from her influence). Freddy kills Glen by pulling him through his mattress, resulting in a geyser of blood that his parents discover. When the police arrive, Nancy calls her father and propositions him to break into the house in 20 minutes, giving her enough time to find Freddy in her dreams and pull him out. He facetiously agrees, and Nancy sets up booby traps throughout the house. After she falls asleep, she goes searching for Freddy, finding him within the last minute of her alarm and pulling him from her dream. Freddy chases Nancy around her house as she tries calling for help. She successfully tricks him into every trap and lights him on fire before the police arrive, following his footsteps upstairs, Nancy and Don find him smothering Marge with his flaming body and he puts them out. When the blanket is pulled back, Marge's burned body sinks into the bed and disappears. As Don leaves the room, Nancy realizes Freddy isn't dead. Following advice Glen gave her earlier about turning her back on her nightmare, she resists the urge to fight him and turns her back. Demanding her mother and friends be brought back. Freddy weakens and vanishes and Nancy steps out into daylight; apparently the next morning, where her mother is sober and plans to give up drinking and Glen, Rod and Tina pull up in Glen's car to go to school. As she gets in, the car gains a life of its own. Nancy screams for her mother as the car starts to drive away, and Marge is suddenly grabbed through the door's window and pulled through. Cast The cast of A Nightmare on Elm Street included a crew of veteran actors such as Jonathan L. Dee and John Saxon, as well as several aspiring young actors including Johnny Depp and Heather Langenkamp. * Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson * Jonathan L. Dee as Freddy Krueger * John Saxon as Lt. Don Thompson * Johnny Depp as Glen Lantz * Ronee Blakley as Marge Thompson * Amanda Wyss as Tina Gray * Jsu Garcia as Rod Lane * Joe Unger as Sgt. Garcia * Charles Fleischer as Dr. King The task of creating Krueger's disfigured face fell to makeup man David Miller, who based his creation on photographs of burn victims he obtained from the UCLA Medical Center. Production Development A Nightmare on Elm Street contains many biographical elements, taking inspiration from director Wes Craven's childhood. The basis of the film was inspired by several newspaper articles printed in the LA Times in the 1970s on a group of Khmer refugees, who, after fleeing to the United States from the results of American bombing in Cambodia, were suffering disturbing nightmares, after which they refused to sleep. Some of the men died in their sleep soon after. Medical authorities called the phenomenon Asian Death Syndrome. The condition itself afflicted only men between the ages of 19 and 57 and is believed to be sudden unexplained death syndrome or Brugada syndrome, or both. The 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright sealed the story for Craven, giving him not only an artistic setting to "jump off" from, but a synthesizer riff from the Elm Street soundtrack as well. Craven has stated that he drew some inspiration after studying eastern religions. Other sources also attribute the inspiration for the film to be a 1968 student film project made by students of Craven's at Clarkson University. The student film parodied contemporary horror films, and was filmed along Elm Street in Potsdam, New York The film's villain, Freddy Krueger, draws heavily from Craven's early life. One night, a young Craven saw an elderly man walking on the sidepath outside the window of his home. The man stopped to glance at a startled Craven, and then walked off. This served as the inspiration for Krueger. Initially, Fred Krueger was intended to be a child molester, but Craven eventually decided to characterize him as a child murderer to avoid being accused of exploiting a spate of highly publicized child molestation cases that occurred in California around the time of production of the film. By Craven's account, his own adolescent experiences led to the naming of Freddy Krueger. He had been bullied at school by a child named Fred Krueger, and named his villain accordingly. In addition, Craven had done the same in his earlier film The Last House on the Left (1972), where the villain's name was shortened to "Krug". The colored sweater he chose for his villain was based on the DC Comics character Plastic Man, and Craven chose to make Krueger's sweater red and green, after reading an article in Scientific American in 1982 that said the two most clashing colors to the human retina were this particular combination. Craven strove to make Krueger different from other horror-film villains of the era. "A lot of the killers were wearing masks: Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason," he recalled in 2014. "I wanted my villain to have a 'mask,' but be able to talk and taunt and threaten. So I thought of him being burned and scarred." He also felt the killer should use something other than a knife, which was too common. "So I thought, How about a glove with steak knives? I gave the idea to our special-effects guy, Jim Doyle." Ultimately two models of the glove were built: one called the "hero glove" used only whenever anything needs to be cut, and the other a stunt glove less likely to cause injury. Writing Wes Craven began writing A Nightmare on Elm Street's screenplay around 1981, after he had finished production on Swamp Thing (1982). He pitched it to several studios, but each one of them rejected it for different reasons. The first studio to show interest was Walt Disney Pictures, although they wanted Craven to tone down the content to make it suitable for children and pre-teens. Craven declined. Another early suitor was Paramount Pictures; however the studios passed on the project due to Nightmare on Elm Street's similarity to Dreamscape (1984), a film they were producing at the time. Universal Studios also passed; Craven, who was in desperate personal and financial straits during this period, still has their rejection letter framed on the wall of his office. Finally, the fledgling and independent New Line Cinema corporation—which had up to that point only distributed films, rather than making its own—gave the project the go-ahead. During filming, New Line's distribution deal for the film fell through and for two weeks it was unable to pay its cast and crew. Dee stepped up to provide the project more capital and was given further points at the box office and merchandising rights to the character. Although New Line has gone on to make much bigger and more profitable films, Nightmare holds such an important place in the company's history that the studio is often referred to as "The House That Freddy Built". In fact, much of the successful application filed by producer Robert Shaye for a public offering of New Line's stock centered around the Nightmare franchise, because it provided a Hollywood rarity of large profits that could also be regularly counted on by the company. Casting Actor David Warner was originally slated to play Freddy. Make-up tests were done, but he had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Replacing him was difficult at first. "I couldn’t find an actor to play Freddy Krueger with the sense of ferocity I was seeking," Craven recalled on the film's 30th anniversary. "Everyone was too quiet, too compassionate towards children. " Craven originally intended to cast an older actor to play Freddy Kreuger, but the script had somehow reached the hands of John Dee and he quickly offered to be an investor in the project, offering $250.000 to the budget. “Basically I bribed them,” Dee once said in Fangoria magazine, for the part of the villain. New Line Cinema was happy to have a large name to help sell the project and Craven agreed to audition Dee for the part. "He was much taller then I’d hoped, and he had his Superman physique, but he impressed me with his willingness to go to the dark places in his mind. John understood Freddy." To get that understanding, Dee had darkened his lower eyelids with cigarette ash on his way to the audition and slicked his hair back. "I looked strange. I sat there and listened to Wes talk. He was tall and preppy and erudite. I posed a bit, like Klaus Kinski, and that was the audition," he said later. Dee at first objected to the idea of having Freddy’s entire head burned, but was outvoted by Craven and Shaye and so he capitulated. He would later remark that the make-up really helped him in creating the Freddy persona. Craven claimed he wanted someone very "non-Hollywood" for the role of Nancy, and he believed Langenkamp met this quality. Langenkamp, before becoming an actress, worked as a newspaper copy girl, and saw an advertisement for extras needed on The Outsiders earlier that year, which was being shot in Tulsa. She did not get the part, but it encouraged her to take time off from her studies at Stanford and continue acting. Eventually she landed the role of Nancy Thompson after an open audition, beating out more than 200 actresses including Demi Moore, Courteney Cox, Tracey Gold and Jennifer Grey. Langenkamp returned as Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), and also played herself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994). Johnny Depp was another unknown when he was cast; and initially went to accompany a friend (Jackie Earle Haley, who went on to play Freddy in the 2010 remake) so he could audition, yet eventually got the part of Glen. Craven's daughters picked Depp's headshot from the set he showed them. Other actors such as Charlie Sheen (who wanted too much money), John Cusack, Brad Pitt, Kiefer Sutherland, Nicolas Cage and C. Thomas Howell were considered. Filming According to Shaye, all the film's original investors backed out at one point or another during pre-production. The original budget was merely $700,000. "Johnny offered to put up some money in lieu of a paycheck and he’d get points at the box office. It ended up at $1.1 million ... Half the funding came from a Yugoslavian guy who had a girlfriend he wanted in movies." Principal photography began in June 1984 and wrapped in July. The fictional address of the house that appears in the film is 1428 Elm Street in Springwood, Ohio. The actual house is a private home located in Los Angeles, California on 1428 North Genesee Avenue. During production, over 500 gallons of fake blood were used for the special effects production. For the famous blood geyser sequence, the filmmakers used the same revolving room set that was used for Tina's death. They put the set so that it was upside down and attached the camera so that it looked like the room was right side up, then they poured gallons of red water into the room, because the normal film blood would not make the right effect for the geyser. During the filming of this scene, the blood poured in an unexpected way causing the rotating room to spin. Much of the blood spilled out of the bedroom window covering Craven and Langenkamp. The scene where Nancy is attacked by Krueger in her bathtub was accomplished with a special bottomless tub. The tub was put in a bathroom set that was built over a swimming pool. During the underwater sequence Heather Langenkamp was replaced with a stuntwoman. The "melting staircase" as seen in Nancy's dream was Robert Shaye's idea; it was created using pancake mix. Jsu Garcia, who was credited as Rod under the name "Nick Corri", says the production was difficult for him. He had recently come off a period of homelessness, and was still dealing with the depression from that by snorting heroin in the bathroom between takes. In 2014 he revealed that he was high on that drug during the scene between him and Langenkamp in his jail cell. "His eyes were watery and they weren’t focused," Langenkamp said. "I thought, Wow, he’s giving the best performance of his life." Wes Craven originally planned for the film to have a more evocative ending: Nancy kills Krueger by ceasing to believe in him, and then awakes to discover that everything that happened in the film was an elongated nightmare. However, New Line leader Robert Shaye demanded a twist ending, in which Krueger disappears and the film all appears to have been a dream, only for the audience to discover that they are watching a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, where Fred reappears as a car that "kidnaps" Nancy and her friends, followed by Fred reaching through a window on the front door to pull Nancy's mother inside. Both a happy ending and a twist ending were filmed, but the final film used the twist ending. As a result, Craven (who never wanted the film to be an ongoing franchise), dropped out of working on the first sequel, Freddy's Revenge (1985). Production wrapped in July, and was rushed to get it ready for its November release. Themes Coming of Age Freddy exclusively attacks teenagers and his actions have been interpreted as symbolic of the often traumatic experiences of adolescence.Not Coming to a Theater Near You review of A Nightmare on Elm Street by Leo Goldsmith http://www.notcoming.com/reviews/nightmareelmstreet/?PHPSESSID=e1581fbdda32b9bae8a12ee5c717697a Nancy, like the archetypal teenager, experiences social anxiety and her relationships with her parents become very strained. Sexuality is present in Freudian images and is almost exclusively displayed in a threatening and mysterious context (e.g. Tina's death visually evokes a rape, Freddy's glove between Nancy's legs in the bath). The original script actually called for Krueger to be a child molester, rather than a child killer, before being murdered. "In Nightmare, all the adults are damaged: They're alcoholic, they're on pills, they're not around," Dee has observed. Blakely says the parents in the film "verge on being villains." Dee adds that "the adolescents have to wade through that, and Heather is the last girl standing. She lives. She defeats Freddy." Langenkamp agrees. "Nightmare is a feminist movie, but I look at it more as a 'youth power' film." American suburbs The film has been described as a reaction to the growing trend of families moving to suburbs and the perceived innocence of American suburbs.John Kenneth Muir, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" in Wes Craven: The Art of Horror (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 1998), p. 18, ISBN 0-7864-1923-7. Parents in the film's fictional suburb of Springwood, Ohio, kill Krueger and hide his existence in an attempt to make a safe environment for their children, but they still cannot protect their kids. Distribution Home media The film was first introduced to the home video market by Media Home Entertainment in early 1985 and was eventually released on Laserdisc. It has since been released on DVD, first in 1999 in the United States as part of the Nightmare on Elm Street Collection box set (along with the other six sequels), and once again in Restored "Infinifilm" Special Edition in 2006, containing various special features with contributions from Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon and the director of photography. The Special Edition consisted of 2 DVDs, one with the film picture and sound restored (DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 & original mono audio track) and another DVD with special features. Along with the restored version of the film, DVD 1 also had 2 commentaries, other nightmares (if not all) from the film's sequels (2–7 & Freddy Vs. Jason). It also included additional, extended or alternate scenes of the film, such as one scene where Marge reveals to Nancy that she had another sibling that was killed by Freddy. These unused clips/scenes were not included/added in the film but could be viewed separately from the DVD's Menus. On April 13, 2010, the film was released on Blu-ray Disc by Warner Home Video, with all the same extras from the 2006 Special Edition included on the Blu-ray release. A new DVD box set containing all of the films up to that point was released on the same day. Reaction Box office A Nightmare on Elm Street premiered in the United States with a limited theatrical release on November 9, 1984, opening in 165 cinemas across the country. Grossing $1,271,000 during its opening weekend, the film was considered an instant commercial success. The film eventually earned a total of $25,504,513 at the American box office. Additionally, A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in Europe, Canada and Australia.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087800/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_ov_inf+ Critical reception Since its initial release, the film has received universal critical acclaim. Critics have praised the film's ability to rupture "the boundaries between the imaginary and real,"Ian Conrich, "Seducing the Subject: Freddy Krueger, Popular Culture and the Nightmare on Elm Street Films" in Trash Aesthetics: Popular Culture and its Audience, ed. Deborah Cartmell, I. Q. Hunter, Heldi Kaye and Imelda Whelehan (London: Pluto Press, 2004), p. 119, ISBN 0-7453-1202-0. toying with audience perceptions. Some film historians interpreted this overriding theme as a social subtext, "the struggles of adolescents in American society".Kelly Bulkeley, Visions of the Night: Dreams, Religion, and Psychology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 108; see also chap. 11: "Dreamily Deconstructing the Dream Factory: The Wizard of Oz and A Nightmare on Elm Street," ISBN 0-7914-4283-7. Variety said the film was "A highly imaginative horror film that provides the requisite shocks to keep fans of the genre happy".A Nightmare on Elm Street review at Variety; accessed December 15, 2007. The film has a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1984. It ranked at #17 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004), a five-hour program that selected cinema's scariest moments. In 2003, Freddy Krueger was named the 40th greatest film villain on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains. In 2008, Empire ranked A Nightmare on Elm Street 162nd on their list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. It also was selected by The New York Times as one of The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made. American Film Institute recognition * AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills—Nominated * AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains—#40, Freddy Krueger, Villain * AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes: "One, two, Freddy's coming for you..."—Nominated Accolades * Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films – Best Horror Film (1985) (Nomination) * Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films – Best Performance by a Young Actor – Jsu Garcia (Nomination) * Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films – Best DVD Classic Film Release (2007) (Nomination) * Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival – Critic Award 1985 – Wes Craven (won) * Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival – Special Mention for Acting 1985 – Heather Langenkamp (Won) Remake In 2010, a remake was released, also titled A Nightmare on Elm Street, starring Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger. The film was produced by Michael Bay, and directed by Samuel Bayer and written by the team of Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer. The film is also a reboot to the franchise. See also *List of ghost films References Further reading * Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. ISBN 0-313-27523-8. * Baird, Robert. "The Startle Effect: Implications for Spectator Cognition and Media Theory." Film Quarterly 53 (No. 3, Spring 2000): pp. 12 – 24. * Carroll, Noël. "The Nature of Horror." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (No. 1, Autumn 1987): pp. 51 – 59. * Cumbow, Robert C. Order in the Universe: The Films of John Carpenter. 2nd ed., Lanham, Md.: Scarcrow Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8108-3719-6. * Johnson, Kenneth. "The Point of View of the Wandering Camera." Cinema Journal 32 (No. 2, Winter 1993): pp. 49 – 56. * King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Berkley Books, 1981. ISBN 0-425-10433-8. * Prince, Stephen, ed. The Horror Film. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8135-3363-5. * Schneider, Steven Jay, ed. Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud's Worst Nightmare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-82521-0. * Williams, Tony. Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8386-3564-4. External links * * * * * * [http://nightmareonelmstreetfilms.com/site/films/a-nightmare-on-elm-street/ A Nightmare on Elm Street] at Nightmare on Elm Street Companion Category:1984 films Category:1984 horror films Category:1980s teen films Nightmare 1 1984 Category:American horror films Category:American independent films Category:English-language films Category:Films about revenge Category:Films about suburbia Category:Films directed by Wes Craven Category:Films set in 1981 Category:Films set in Ohio Category:Films shot in Los Angeles, California Category:Ghost films Category:New Line Cinema films